Conversations with my Girlfriend... Ep. #3 (Not so Nerdy)

It has been a great many days since my last post.... Sadly, this means that many "Girlfriend Interactions" have gone undocumented, and for this I apologize.

I would claim that I will do better in the future, but the truth is, that I likely will not and I've learned to appropriately manage expectations.

On to the topic at hand: Baseball.

Just in case you're either living under a rock, or don't care about sports, or both.... The Chicago Cubs are in the World Series. This is kind of a big deal, because they are possibly, maybe, potentially... finally freeing themselves of the "Curse of the Billy Goat."

The Curse of the Billy Goat is the name of a sports-related curse that was supposedly placed on the Chicago Cubs Major League Baseball franchise in 1945 by Billy Goat Tavern owner William Sianis. Because the odor of his pet goat, Murphy, was bothering other fans, Sianis was asked to leave Wrigley Field, the Cubs' home ballpark, during game four of the 1945 World Series.Outraged, Sianis allegedly declared, "Them Cubs, they ain't gonna win no more." The Cubs lost the 1945 World Series to the Detroit Tigers, and have not won a World Series championship since 1908. After the incident with Sianis and Murphy, the Cubs did not play in the World Series for the next 71 years.

However, you must forgive me, as I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit.

This past Friday night, I suggested to my Girlfriend (Rita, remember?) that since we'd both had rather long weeks, that we go one of our neighborhood gastropubs for a quick dinner and a drink. She obliged and we headed to one of our local favorite spots: Cook and Shaker. We walked in the door, and opted to take a seat at the bar and proceeded to order a few beers and some food.... At which point, we noted that the TV above the bar was showing the World Series, and that is when the fun began:

Rita: Why is it such a big deal that the Cubs are in the World Series?

Me: Well, it's because of the fact that it's been like a million years since they've even been in one, let alone WON.

Rita: Why though?

Me: Because of the Curse of the Billy Goat.

(I then proceeded to explain what that was.)

Rita: Now that you mention that, I think I've heard about that somewhere... Baseball people are weird.

Me: Yeah, baseball is full of superstitions... Like, remember when the Boston Red Sox won the World Series not too long ago?

Rita: Yeah, people at work were freaking out about it.

Me: That's because of the Curse of the Bambino.

Rita: Who?

Me: The Bambino......

Rita: ...

Me: The GREAT Bambino?

Rita: ...

Me: The Sultan of Swat?

Rita: ...

Me: The Colossus of Clout?

Rita: ...

Me: BABE RUTH?!?!?!

Rita: Oh yeah, I just watched a documentary about him not long ago on PBS. He was the black guy right?

Me: No... That's Jackie Robinson.

I think the only thing left to say is:

Life Adventures: A day in the life of a geek - Ep. 1

This entry won't be like the "Nerd Conversations with my Girlfriend" posts that I have written sporadically in the past. This is more of: "General stuff that happens in my life, while being a geek." It's not particularly geek-esque (actually it's not at all), but since I am a geek, it happened to me, then well.... the boot still fits. Right?

Anyway, on to the story:

I left my office at about 3 o'clock today to drive down the street to WaWa to grab some food because I hadn't eaten at lunch and I was starting to get hangry.

Walking into the store, I see a girl standing outside, looking lost and frazzled, talking to another man outside his car. They didn't appear to know each other. When I came back out again, she was still there, and he was pulling away saying "I hope everything works out for you."

She walked over to my car, still looking lost as I was backing out of the parking space and said to me:

Girl: "Hey, would you be able to give me a ride somewhere? I can pay you nine dollars."

Me: "Where do you need to go?"

Girl: "Um, 'Le Club' in Mount Laurel."

Me: "That's only about 10 minutes from here, go ahead and get in, I'll take you there."

Girl: "Really? I can pay you, all I have is nine dollars though."

Me: "Don't worry about it."

So we start on our way to her destination (she informs me that it's her boyfriend's apartment) and that's when she opens the floodgates... Must be something about talking to a stranger that gives you the freedom to just lay it all out there. (Plus she said I looked very familiar to her, so maybe she had some level of security from finding me familiar? I don't believe I've ever met her in my life however.)

She started giving me her life's story... Interesting enough, we grew up in the same neighborhood, in the same town, only separated by about 8 years. (She was 26, I am now a feeble and old 34.) She explained to me that she was arrested in Camden last night (where she lives apparently) for lighting a cigarette on a train platform and had resisted said arrest. Had spent the night in jail, discovered there was an open warrant out for her from when she had shoplifted clothes when she was 18, but they had released her 'ROR' and she now had to figure out how to find an attorney before her court date in a week. I'm not completely sure how she had made it to Mount Laurel between being released from jail and when I met her, and I didn't ask.

She also blurted that she has PTSD from being abused and raped as a child, and had also gotten into a fight about a week ago that resulted in her having a miscarriage. Add that to the fact that she said that the police who had detained her last night into this morning, had broken her eye glasses, taken her phone, and all of the cash that she had in her pocketbook ($78)... so she was definitely having a rough 2016 so far.

After a night in jail.

Girl: "I'm Kristin, by the way."

Me: "I'm Albie."

Kristin: "Well it's nice to meet you, and thank you so much for the ride.. Dammit where are my cigarettes? Did I leave them in the parking lot at WaWa? Oh, here they are..."

We small-talked a little bit on the drive, changing the subject from her life's woes. Apparently her little sister is getting ready to move to Tennessee, very near to where I lived when I lived there in 2001. She also told me about her two daughters, and we chatted a little bit about our children. Common ground and all.

We arrived at her boyfriend's apartment, and she borrowed my phone to call him, as he wasn't home but he would apparently be there at some point, but was still trying to get free of his work responsibilities to come and assist her.

Kristin: "Thank you so much again for the ride. I think I'll be OK waiting here now."

Me: "No problem at all."

Kristin: "Are you sure you don't want the money?"

Me: "I'm sure. I hope everything turns out alright for you."

Add to the list of problems:
Underwear hanging out of her pants.

Then she wiggled her way out of the car, struggling with her purse, and coat, with her slightly too snug jeans threatening to turn into a wardrobe malfunction at any moment, and I drove off.

I know I didn't solve any of her life's great problems, and honestly I didn't offer advice or suggestions. I mostly just listened to her. I didn't embark upon any grand gestures that altered the course of her life forever.... And I don't know if her story is true, or a fantastic collection of lies and exaggerations that she's made up to tell a stranger, but my gut tells me that the majority of it is likely true.

What I did do.... was give her a positive interaction, with someone who wasn't asking her for anything, not trying to take anything, material or otherwise. I felt like she needed that more than anything in that moment.

If my girlfriend, or one of my sisters was in a bind and needed help from a stranger, I hope that someone out there will do the same for them. Paying it forward into the universe right?

Although, it's possible that my "helping of random people" is going to one day end up with me getting stabbed. Honestly though? It's a risk that I believe is worth taking.

Nerd Conversations with my Girlfriend... Ep. #2

I'd like to begin this post, with a quote from Tevye in "Fiddler on the Roof"...

"A bird may love a fish but where would they build a home together?"

It may be a bit of a misuse of the most literal meaning of that quote to apply it to a relationship between a Geek Boy and a Non-Geek Girl... However, the general ideal does have some applicability. The daily life of a geek is chock full of science fiction, fantasy and borderline obsessive behavior over certain fandoms. And if that geek has embarked upon a relationship with a non-geek, it creates situations on a daily basis where one party to the relationship feels as though they aren't being listened to, and the other party is wondering how long they have to suffer through the inane details of something they have zero desire to ever know anything about. 

Which brings us to today.... The release of the second official teaser trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Episode #7). I saw the news come across my computer screen, and the levels of tepid anticipation and fear began to rise.... then I watched the trailer:

I sat for a moment after watching the 1m59s video... Then I watched it again. And I realized something: JJ Abrams appears to be doing some things right by the fans. I am starting to get hopeful that Episode 7 will be a film that brings new story to the table, while giving the fans throwback to what we know and love from Episodes 4, 5 & 6. Granted, the bar is set pretty low for Abrams, because in my opinion, he only needs to make a film that is better than the prequels (Episodes 1, 2 & 3) which shouldn't be too difficult, considering, I believe I have shot better movies with my cell phone.

It's at that moment, following my little internal monologue (ok, let's be honest, it was an internal dialogue, I did in fact answer myself...) that when this movie releases at the end of this year, that I have a very serious problem on my hands:

Will my non-geeky girlfriend, Rita, be amenable to experiencing this with me?

With that question in mind, I headed over to Facebook, to write "an open letter to my girlfriend" as it related to this upcoming Star Wars release, and it went a little something like this:

Dear Rita,

I don't care that you've only partially paid attention to "A New Hope" or only watched half of "Empire Strikes Back" and have never even seen "Return of the Jedi"...... (Luckily, you've also never seen the prequels, a fact which I am actually a bit envious of...)

I don't care that you have no idea what it means when I say "I Know" to you, or why sometimes I phrase sentences in this way: "In my hand, a beer, I would like." I don't care that you can't listen to me talk about the Expanded Universe, or the relationship of Darth Revan & Malak or the Old Republic to the Star Wars film canon without your eyes glazing over and asking if we can have an "intermission" and continue the conversation 3 or 4 months down the road when you can emotionally handle another dose of ‪#‎geekspeak‬.

On December 18th, 2015.... JJ Abrams is going to either enable me to relive the most glorious memories of my childhood, from the days when my friends and I would pretend to be Jedi Knights in the backyard treehouse, which will put me in the most happy ‪#‎nerdgasm‬ place imaginable......

OR...

He is going to make my fear real, (Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering;) by continuing down the path of disappointment that George Lucas began with the Re-Releases... ‪#‎HanShot‬ ‪#‎GreedoNeverShot‬; and continued through with "The Phantom Menace" and "Attack of the Clones" through to "Revenge of the Sith".... ‪#‎JarJarSucks‬ ‪#‎WTFmidichlorians‬....

Either way.... I am going to need someone with me, either to celebrate with me in my elation, or to provide consolation and to rub my head and say "Poor poor bunny"....

You don't have a choice, so start preparing yourself now.

Sincerely,

Your very nerdy ‪#‎BF‬

I suppose only time will tell if she does in fact come with me to the release... 

-Apostrophe

(Nerdfriend)

Look at what the cat dragged in...

I am a well-rounded geek.

Now I'm not referring to my lack of a chiseled body, it's more of a social-well-roundedness. (Is that a thing? If not, then it should be.) As a kid/teenager I was involved in everything from baseball to soccer, tennis, basketball, ballet, music, computers... to name a few. My mother went to great lengths to make sure that my sisters and I had the fullest childhood experience she could muster and we all benefited from it. 

My older sister is a painter/artist, I am an engineer and a musician, and my younger sisters are fashion/models/writers. None of us have been pigeon-holed into any one particular thing, and we all have a good bit of life-experience to draw from as we navigate the road before us.

That said.... I am NOT a sports-guy as an adult. Not by any far stretch of the term. I'm "in the know" enough that if a bunch of dude-bro's are having a football conversation, I am not completely lost in the mix, asking them if the quarterback hit the puck into the backstop and stole a base in the second half, while hitting for the cycle and scoring a try. I do in fact, enjoy watching baseball both on television and at the park, since I live in Philadelphia and by default am a Phillies fan.... I know, *sigh* I accept your condolences. But my sports-guy-ness (also, should be a word if it's not) pretty much stops there.

For reference, I bought this zip-up hoodie today from Shirt.Woot: 

So with that little backstory.... We arrive at the point of this little narrative, after a few tangent twists and turns:

This Saturday I was at band practice. I've been playing guitar with a new group of folks, and it's pretty wonderful actually. We all bring something unique to the table with backgrounds and styles and thus far it's meshing pretty well. And like pretty much everything I do at this point in my life, it does have a flair of "geek" to it, which includes my approach to playing guitar: I show up to practice with a guitar, an amplifier, and a laptop.

After practice, one of the guys says to me "Hey, my brother is hosting a fund-raiser party tonight, do you wanna go?" Now, it's about 10:30pm at this point, and my girlfriend (Rita, remember?) was expecting me home after practice which was supposed to end at 10:00..... I thought about it for a minute, and said that I would love to go. Shot a text message to Rita letting her know that I was going out with some friends and that I didn't know what time I would be getting home. I never heard back from her. Presumably, I figured it was because she was already asleep, because I think that while I am technically older than Rita, she has the "staying-awake" potential of a woman of a very advanced age. 

It's at this point, that I am informed that the party is at a batting cage.

This doesn't particularly alter my desire to go, even though I haven't hit a baseball since I was in high school. The worst it could go, is that I either step in the cages and miss every pitch and laugh it off, or I don't hit at all and just torture the rest of the party-goers by forcing them to witness my sad attempts at white-guy-nerd-dancing. 

We show up at the batting cage, and pay the nominal door fee (it was a fund-raiser afterall) and I search the room for signs of people that I know. I did in fact find a few folks, and we chatted for a few minutes until I decided it was time to get my geeky self up to the plate and swing a bat. Needless to say, I ended up going for four rounds in the batting cages. (Might have been five... I'd had rather a few too many beers by the end of the night so I lost track of how many times I was in the cages.) And what I did realize, was that after almost 15-years of not swinging a bat or hitting a ball, I still could in fact make contact and drive the ball, hard. That actually felt really good.

After they shut down the cages, which was probably a good idea considering that a room full of people of varying states of drunkenness, standing inches away from violent projectile objects hurtling towards them at speeds around 70mph was unlikely to turn out well.... I spent some time talking to people, meeting new people, and before I could even blink, realized it was 1:30am!!!! I checked my phone, and noted that Rita had not texted me back yet from my earlier text letting her know I was going to be late, and I wasn't sure if that was a good sign or an omen of what was to come.

So we collected ourselves left the party, and I made the trek back to my house. I stumbled in the door at 2:00am carrying guitars and my amplifier, making a tad too much noise as I entered the living room..... Dexter (the poodle whose home I am permitted to have access to.... I'm smart enough to know whose house this is...) started barking when I walked in, and I attempted to shush him, but he would have none of that. After appropriately yelling at me for coming in the door, he ran upstairs to wake up Rita. (A task at which he was immediately successful.)

Rita appeared at the top of the stairs, with bed-head and sleepy-puffy-face, trying to open her eyes in order to adjust to the light.... and then she spoke:

Rita: What time is it?

Me: Um... it's 2 o'clock.

A little part of me, braced for the impact of what the next series of questions were going to be.

Rita: Oh my! Were you at band practice this whole time?

Me: I guess you didn't get my text.....

Rita: No, what was it?

Me: Well I went to that fund-raiser party.

Rita: Hold on....

Rita then walked into the kitchen, opened the fridge and pulled out two beers, opened them, walked back to the stairs, handed me one and sat down on the 3rd step up from the ground...

At that point, Rita and I talked for an hour, with her sitting on the steps, both of us drinking a beer, talking and laughing about the fun I'd had, and how she wished I had stopped by the house on my way to the party and dragged her out of bed and made her come with me. (Although in reality she was happy that I hadn't done that, because Rita does love sleep above all other things.)

I think the moral of the story is this: Rita trusts me. Even though I walked in the door at 2am, smelling of alcohol and cigarettes, having spent the night at a party, her knee-jerk reaction/response was happiness that I'd had a good time. Her default reaction wasn't one of distrust, or anger, or jealousy. 

That was a good moment to have, and was the perfect way to end a pretty great night.

-Apostrophe

(Nerdfriend)

Nerd Conversations with my Girlfriend... Ep. #1

As this is my first post, let's not start off on the wrong foot and possibly bring any sort of misconceptions to the table. I am a nerd, or a geek if you will. I wear it on my sleeve so to speak, so it's not something I am ashamed of, or feel the need to apologize for.

My girlfriend on the other hand? Is not. 

It's pretty much that plain and simple. And because of this different pop-culture/social standing, there are some wonderful interactions that occur as a result of this, which end with the two of us operating on very different wavelengths at times. 

I'll set the tone with the following statement: My girlfriend (for the sake of argument, and to protect the guilty and the innocent, we will call her "Rita" - short for Veverita, which is "squirrel" in Romanian...) has never seen Star Wars™. 

You read that correctly.... Rita has never seen Star Wars. So OBVIOUSLY the first thing that comes to mind is:

So, I've come into this relationship knowing that there would be some very basic potential "problems" with social, cultural and general overall compatibility. But, I initially chose to "overlook" this very obvious (but hopefully not fatal) flaw, and pursue a relationship with her. Some days are more difficult than others..... like today for example....

I was having a conversation with Rita on the phone, and I mentioned the "flux capacitor" in the midst of the discussion. Nothing seemed odd to me about that, because who doesn't reference fictitious (I'm sorry.... super REAL and SCIENTIFIC) things in everyday conversations about life? 

It received zero response. 

The subsequent conversation went a little something like this:

Me: You know, the flux capacitor?
Rita: Ummm...
Me: ....... Back to the Future?
Rita: Oh yeah, the car?
Me: No. It's the thing IN the car, in the backseat that lights up? Remember? When Doc Brown, in 1955 was trying to hang a clock in his bathroom, and he was standing on the toilet, slipped and fell, and hit his head on the sink, blacked out, and had a vision... and when he came to, he designed the flux capacitor which is what makes time travel possible?
Rita: Yeah, I'm going to have to watch that movie again.
Me: Actually, I think this means we have to break up.

 I mean..... How am I supposed to pursue a relationship with a person, who wouldn't understand what I was saying, if I used my most whispery and sultry voice to tell her that she is "my density"??? Moreover, the first time she told me "I love you." and my response was "I know." there was MUCH immediate explaining to do....

These are very real and important problems that nerds face everyday whilst navigating the treacherous realms of love and dating. I hope that my experience can help guide the decisions you make in your endeavors, and  ultimately lead you away from the dark side, and towards the path of love and light.

Sincerely,
Apostrophe
(Nerdfriend)